p What about Easter Island itself? Even if its coastline "has not dropped by a yard" since man first appeared in Oceania, as the oceanographer Chubb maintains, the islands, some of them inhabited, that Captain Davis saw could have existed in the area. Or, as most scientists, including Thor Heyerdahl, today believe, what Davis saw were other Polynesian islands, such as Mangareva and Timoe, whose appearance corresponds to his description.

p Oceanographers note that the floor of the vast southeastern part of the Pacific where Easter Island is situated is remarkable in many respects. There the earth’s crust is not between three and five kilometres thick, as is typical for oceanic crust, but between 20 and 30 kilometres thick, approaching the thickness of the continental crust. This area is the centre of severe earthquakes. Finally, on Easter Island geologists have found samples of rock, such as rhyolites, that are extremely rare in the Pacific and are sooner typical of the volcanoes of island arcs than of open parts of the ocean. Easter Island is part of the gigantic East Pacific Rise, a young geological formation that is still active. (The Rise, a vast underwater land on the bottom of the ocean, reaches a height of two or three kilometres. It is from 2,000 to 4,000 kilometres wide and about 15,000 kilometres long, the size of an entire continent!)

p The topography and s true lure of Ihe eastern part of the Pacific and the structure of the neighbouring continental shelf evidently started developing in the Early Tertiary and continue to be technically active, says Professor Menard. The majority of experts agree that dry land once existed in the Easter Island area. It may have been a large land mass or most probably a group of islands that later sank. But when did they sink? The same experts say this happened very long ago, before human times or, at the very latest, at the end of the last Ice Age, between 10,000 and 12,000 years ago. The culture of Easter Island cannot possibly be that old. The earliest traces of man on that mysterious island date back only to the 4th century A.D.

p Of course, archeologists may find earlier traces, but it is clear that man arrived on Easter Island somewhere at the turn of our era, perhaps even a few centuries before, but certainly not several millennia ago. The great changes that took place 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, when the last Ice Age ended, may have something to do with the island’s geological history but they cannot provide a key to the riddle of its astonishing culture. Still, there are findings that prompt us to recall the hypotheses of Menzbir, Brown and Zubov.

p The only European who could have seen large numbers of kohau rongo-rongo wooden tablets, instead of the score or so that remain and are now in museums, was the missionary Eugenio Eyraud. Brother Eyraud reported: "In all the huts are found tables of wood or sticks covered with hieroglyphs; these are figures of animals unknown in the island.” Soon after, thousands of these priceless monuments of Easter Island writing were destroyed. When the few remaining 78 tablets fell inlo the hands of Bishop Topaiio Jaussen, the lirsl man Lo study the kohau rongorongo hieroglyphs, he did not find any animals unknown on Easter Island represented on them, or any of the other traces of antiquity mentioned by Engenio Eyranrl. Bishop Jaussen concluded that the ancient tablets were lost to man.

p The kohau rongo-rongo writing has not been deciphered to this day, and we can only conjecture on the meaning of those strange hieroglyphs. It is of course futile to guess what the destroyed tablets may have been like. Missionary Eyraud, not an expert in ancient scripts, may well have been mistaken, and the hieroglyphs on the missing tablets may have represented the same stylised drawings of fish, birds, plants, ritualistic and household objects, weapons, men and mythological creatures as those on the tablets that have come down to us. The conventionalised representations of the hieroglyphic script incised on hard wood with a shark’s tooth could easily have bewildered him.

p Now here is another point, this time relating to the field of toponymies. The Easter Islanders call their land Te Pito o te Henna, which means "Navel of the Universe”. Thor Heyerdahl believes that Easter Island, with its developed culture, was the cornerstone of the ancient history of the Eastern Pacific, for no other island presumed to call itself the "Navel of the Universe”.

p Another explanation of this resounding name is possible. Many tribes and peoples, particularly those living in isolation, are inclined to consider their land the centre of the universe. (The ancient Hebrews called Jerusalem "the hub of the universe".) Both interpretations of the name of Easter Island are highly plausible, but 79 Ihero is a third interpretation, given by the islanders themselves, or rather, by their ancient legends. According to these legends, the giant Uvvoke (or Uoko) destroyed a vast country, leaving only Easter Island, which was called Te Pito o te llenua, or Navel of the Universe. True, there were doubts for a long time about the antiquity of the I woke legend. The first collectors of folklore on the island did not mention this legend. But an analysis of the books which Thor Heyerdahl obtained when the Norwegian archeological expedition worked on Easter Island shows that the Uwoke legend goes back into the mists of time. (Heyerdahl’s Aku-Aku describes the finding of those books, while his Dax Abenteuer einer Theorie gives a scientific analysis of their discovery and subject-matter.) The books contain texts dealing with the peopling of Easter Island. There is a text that was evidently a primer in a study of the kohau rongorongo script when there were still men who knew the hieroglyphs. Among the texts is a mention of Uwoke and "Kainga Nuinui”, meaning " Enormous Land”. Here is what the story of the creation of Easter Island sounds like. It is recorded in one of the books which Heyerdahl found and was translated from the language of Easter Island into Russian by the present writer.

p “The youth Teea Waka said: ’Our country was once a big land, a very big land.’

p “Kuukuu asked him: ’Why did the country grow small?’

p ’Teea Waka answered: ’Uwoke lowered his staff on it. He lowered his staff at Ohiro. The waves rose, and the land became small. People began to call it Te Pito o te Henua. Uwoke’s staff broke against Mount Puku Pubipuhi.’

p “Teea Waka and Kuukuu conversed al Ko te Toinonga o Teea Waka (’The Place where Teea Waka Landed’). Then ariki (chief) Hotu Matua settled on the island.

p “’This was once a big land,’ Kuukuu told him.

p “’The land sank,’ Teea Waka said. Then he added, ’This place is called Ko te Tomonga o Teea Waka.’

p “’Why did the land sink?’ Hotu Matua asked.

p “’Uwoke did it. He lowered the land,’ said Teea Waka. ’The land came to be called Te Pito o te Hernia. When Uwoke’s staff was big the land fell into an abyss. Puku Puhipuhi is the name of the place where Uwoke’s staff broke.’

p “’That was not the staff of Uwoke, my friend,’ said chief Hotu Matua. ’That was the lightning of the god Makemake.’

p “Chief Hotu Matua began to live on the island.”

p Here the text ends. Hotu Matua, meaning Father Hotu, is well known on Easter Island. He was the first settler to have migrated to Easter Island from the east, from the distant land of Marae Renga. Kuukuu was one of the seven scouts whom, legend says, Hotu Matua sent to Easter Island before he set out on the voyage with hundreds of his people. Makemake is the name of Easter Island’s most powerful god, who created man. Lightning is one of his attributes. The name Teea Waka (according to other versions of the legend, it was Ratawake or Ngata Wake) is a name that is also encountered by students of Easter Island folklore. Although legends say the island was deserted when Hotu Matua’s scouts arrived, the scouts nevertheless met people, one of whom was called Teea Waka.

p Diplomats are not the only ones lo pass things over in silence when they make speeches. Folklore texts and legends, including those of the inhabitants of Oceania, do the same. Easter Island was evidently settled long before Hotu Matua arrived, but later the original settlers were simply erased from memory, and credit for discovering the island went to Hotu Matua. This conclusion was tentatively reached from texts which mention that Hotu Matua’s scouts encountered some sort of people on Easter Island. Archeological excavations have completely confirmed this. According to the genealogy of Hotu Matua, the island’s first ruler, he came there in the 15th, 13th or perhaps even the llth century A.D. Yet we now know that the island was already inhabited in the 4th century A.D.

p Perhaps the above myth of the creation of Easter Island reflects a struggle between two traditions. Ilotu Matua is inclined to ascribe all achievements, including the creation of the Navel of the Universe, to his god Makemake. But the much earlier inhabitants believed the island to be the remains of a large land mass destroyed by Uwoke (Uoke) and submerged in the ocean. Could this mean that the original settlers witnessed extensive subsidences of land in that area? In the one hundred years since Schliemann’s sensational excavations, archeologists and historians have learned to respect traditions and legends, no matter how improbable they may appear. Oceanographers consider that the land around Easter Island sank at least 1,000,000 years ago, and that the last significant rise in the ocean level occurred about 12,000 years ago.

p Easter Island legends also mention an onslaught of the waves. It is unlikely that Stone Age man 82 conducted geophysical investigations on the ocean floor or knew the history of the Ice Age. It is more logical to suppose that the dwellers on Easter Island witnessed land subsidences. And this means they took place not millions of years ago but much, much later, in human times.

If that is so, there should be mention of sunken land in the myths and legends of other parts of Oceania. And there is. In the folklore and mythology of the inhabitants of other East Pacific islands and archipelagoes near Easter Island (in this case “near” means places hundreds of miles away), we find mention of "a flood" and "the destruction of a large land”.